Shevon Lewis
Home: Toronto, Ontario
Title: Observing the Cosmos
Media: Oil on linen
Dimensions: 61 x 51 cm
Website: shevonlewis.com
Instagram: @shevjlewis
ARTIST STATEMENT
Observing the Cosmos (2025) reflects my ongoing interest in duality, introspection, and transformation. This portrait captures the tension between chaos and calm, situating the figure within a space of both contemplation and immersion. I use opaque oils to layer gesture and colour, allowing the paint itself to mirror the immediacy of human thought and emotional presence. In this work, as in much of my practice, I explore how individuals navigate inner turbulence while holding space for resilience. My approach combines careful observation with intuitive mark-making, creating iridescent surfaces through complex colour theory. I want the portrait to hold both dynamism and stillness—a balance of highs, mids, and lows that reflects the layered rhythms of human experience.
My portrait works emerge from lived experience by capturing both turmoil and renewal. My process begins with drawing from life, translating emotional states into linework, and then layering photography, digital composition, and paint to develop narratives that evolve throughout production. I am interested in how figures inhabit space amidst external and internal pressures, balancing turbulence with moments of clarity and air. Ultimately, I allow the work to move me, embracing the unfolding of meaning as the image takes form.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Shevon Lewis is a Toronto-based oil painter with a background in illustration. His practice explores themes of duality, transformation, and perseverance, often through portraiture and still life. Working primarily in oil, Lewis combines gestural immediacy with carefully constructed palettes, producing layered, luminous images that invite sustained reflection.
Lewis has exhibited extensively in Toronto and across Canada, including the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, Propeller Gallery, and Casey House’s Art With Heart auction. His work has also been presented at TEDx Trinity Bellwoods and featured in Tomorrow’s Talent Vol. 3 by Booooooom. In 2022, he received the Emerging Artist Award from the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair and Propeller Gallery. Lewis teaches in OCAD University’s Illustration program and leads accessible community life drawing sessions in Toronto.